The present invention relates to a drive system for driving a banknote into a validator and also allowing the banknote to be driven out of the validator in the reverse direction. In particular, some of the drive rollers have different operating characteristics with respect to the direction the banknote is being fed, and in particular, the rollers are active during ejection of a banknote to reduce possible jamming of the banknote.
Banknote validators are now commonly used with a host of different types of vending machines and gaming machines. These validators receive banknotes of different denominations and carry out certain investigations of the banknote to predict whether the banknote is authentic. The banknotes are typically received through an inlet of the validator and passed by a series of drive rollers past various sensors provided either side of a banknote evaluation channel. Investigations are conducted as the banknote is moved through the validator. If the investigations are satisfactory, the banknote is accepted and passed to a banknote cassette or banknote accumulator. If the investigations indicate the bill may not be authentic, it is rejected and returned to the user through the inlet.
Typically, the trailing edge of the banknote has passed the inlet to the validator before the final determination with respect to authenticity, is made and there can be problems if the banknote becomes jammed, upon a reverse direction of the drive rollers to return the banknote through the inlet. This results in a very unfortunate situation where the user has in good faith, provided the banknote to the validator and the validator has determined that the banknote should not be accepted. The attempt to return the unwanted banknote to the user results in the banknote becoming jammed within the validator. In many cases, the user does not even have a portion of the banknote exposed within the inlet which could be engaged to attempt to manually withdraw the banknote from the validator. Furthermore, the validator is now inoperative until a technician can access the validator and remove the jammed banknote.
The present invention provides a series of drive rollers having differing characteristics with respect to movement of the banknote in the feed direction, versus movement of the banknote to eject the banknote from the validator. In the forward direction, passive rollers are held against rotation while freely rotating in the opposite direction.